Hub competition and travel times in the worldwide airport network

The aim of this work is to measure the competition between hubs based on an analysis of travel times in the world-wide airport network. By considering the minimum travel time required to connect each pair of airports, it is possible to separate the effects of hub position and temporal coordination. This analysis was carried out at the global level, considering all 232 airports with more than 3 million seats yearly offered in departure flights, and also in relevant geographic markets. The results show a high level of competition among the most important world airports, but the major airports of Europe have an advantage over the major American and Asian airports. We also show that airports located in different continents often compete for the same origin-destination markets. Geographical position appears to be the most important variable explaining hub performance. In the last part of the empirical analysis, we apply this methodology to evaluate the impact of the US-EU open sky agreements on hub competition in that market.